Criteo S.A., the advertising platform for the open Internet, released its second Global Commerce Review of the year with data gathered during Q2 of 2018. The report analyzed browsing and purchasing data from over 5,000 retailers in more than 80 countries and found that shoppers continue to embrace mobile web and smartphone app technology for purchases, especially among pure-play online retailers.

“Retailers around the world are continuing to see shopper preferences shift as they become more reliant on the convenience and personalization that in-app commerce experiences can offer,” said Jonathan Opdyke, Chief Strategy Officer, Criteo. “Yet as in-app sales rise, it’s imperative for retailers to understand that simply launching an app does not necessarily mean that it is going to yield immediate returns. Our Q2 Global Commerce Review found a strong correlation between in-app transaction growth and retailers that develop and commit to an ongoing shopping app promotion strategy.”

The top three key takeaways from Criteo’s Q2 Global Commerce Review include:

Transactions completed on mobile web, and especially on smartphone, continue to rise in most countries and regions.The share of app transactions for advertisers who promote their shopping app steadily increases over time.Retailers with a brick-and-mortar presence, on average, tend to fall behind their online-only competitors when it comes to capturing in-app demand.

The Q2 Global Commerce Review serves as a powerful benchmarking tool for marketers as they navigate shopper behaviors across desktop, mobile web and apps. To further enhance how the Q2 data can be turned into actionable insights in advance of the holiday shopping season, Criteo has also launched its Seasonal Sales Dashboard. The free online tool empowers retailers to analyze how shoppers behaved globally during the 2017 holiday push. The interactive tool is powered by 1 billion transactions from 2,500 retailers in 16 countries. Users can drill down into the data set and sort by country, retail category and date ranges between Nov. 1, 2017 and Dec. 31, 2017, accessing insights into trends across the entire Holiday 2017 season.

“With just over 100 shopping days until Christmas, retailers need to understand the nuanced browsing and purchasing patterns of their primary customers on mobile in order to market mobile web and in-app experiences that will truly move the needle later this year, especially on Black Friday and Cyber Monday,” said Jaysen Gillespie, Vice President and Head of Analytics and Data Science, Criteo. “We are confident that marketers will benefit from Criteo’s Seasonal Sales Dashboard given the granularity of the data and the lead time they still have to adjust mobile strategies before the shopping season truly gets started.”

Additional Q2 Global Commerce Review research highlights:

Mobile Continues to RiseIn many countries, particularly Northern Europe and Japan, mobile transactions now represent more than 50% of online transactions.APAC has been a clear leader in mobile transactions (51 percent) but all other regions continue to catch up, including Europe (now 44 percent) and the Middle East & Africa (47 percent).

Success Hinges on Smart PromotionGlobally, mobile dominates among retailers that promote their shopping apps. Criteo tracked a 30 percent year-over-year increase in the share of in-app transactions amongthese retailers.For clients who promote their shopping apps, APAC reports the highest share of transactions from those apps, followed by just over one-quarter in Europe and 18 percent in the Americas.Retailers that have or are considering a shopping app have good reason to invest in promotion—in North America, the conversion rate on shopping apps is more than three times higher than on mobile web.

Online-Only Retailers Continue to Outpace Traditional Retailers (When Both Promote Shopping Apps)For online only retailers who promote their app, a full 31% of transactions come from the in-app purchase channel.Brick-and-mortar retailers that promote a shopping app see fewer in-app transactions (21 percent) compared to pure online players, highlighting the opportunity for these retailers to further integrate app technology into shoppers’ experience before, during and after they visit a physical store.